Displaying items by tag: Software Modernization

The U.S. Air Force's Integrated Logistics System - Supply (ILS-S), has been a cornerstone of military logistics for over five decades. This complex and mission-critical system, which tracks more than 35 million assets valued at $18 billion across 1.7 million warehouse locations, has been a significant part of the Air Force's operations, supporting 18,000 users and over 100,000 consumers of ILS-S information across 250 military installations.

Historically, the Air Force had attempted to modernize and move away from expensive Unisys Mainframes without success. Their earlier endeavors earned the system the nickname "The Beast" and was featured in a 2003 book on legacy system modernization by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon.

However, the outcomes changed dramatically when TSRI, NTT Data, and CGI leveraged TSRI’s model- and rule-based transformation and refactoring solution, JANUS® Studio, to modernize the 1.3 million lines of COBOL to Java and migrate the system to an elastic, secure, cloud-native environment on AWS GovCloud.

Watch Paul Saladna, Lead Architect at NTT Data discuss what made this project so successful!

In the initial phase, TSRI converted the 1.3 million lines of Unisys COBOL to modern, maintainable Java and the teams migrated the system to an on-prem mid-tier environment. In a second phase, the application underwent further automated refactoring by the teams for code quality and performance and then migrated to the AWS GovCloud, gaining the benefits of a cloud-native, scalable multi-tier environment like setting up DevSecOps and CI/CD pipelines and providing network interoperability. 

This transformative project marked a significant milestone in automated modernization and cloud-native deployment for the Air Force and has been heralded as a huge success by the USAF, setting a precedent for future modernizations.

“All told, we started at $30 million prior to the modernization and ended at about $3 million post-modernization; a pretty significant cost savings!”

Paul, who started with ILS-S back in 2003, played a pivotal role in transitioning the system from a fragmented, green-screen-based setup to a unified cloud-computing solution. His leadership was instrumental in steering the project from its inception, through its on-prem modernization phase, to its ultimate migration to a cloud-native architecture on AWS.

The modernization's driving forces were multifaceted, focusing on reducing infrastructure costs, mitigating COBOL developer dependency, and enhancing platform stability and capabilities. The Air Force required a fast and seamless transition with no loss in functionality or performance, despite the concurrent challenges posed by active military engagements.

The decision to adopt AWS GovCloud was influenced by the Air Force's existing computational frameworks and the natural fit of AWS for Java/Python-based projects, given its extensive use and the associated economies of scale.

TSRI was chosen for this monumental task through a rigorous selection process, showcasing unparalleled automation capabilities and a thorough understanding of the legacy COBOL code, which set them apart from other vendors.

“TSRI demonstrated the highest degree of conversion capabilities and past performance and represented the lowest risk for us to achieve mission objectives. Really, they stood out.”

The outcomes of this modernization are profound, achieving a 90% reduction in total costs—from $30 million annually to approximately $3 million post-modernization. Additionally, the project facilitated the reassignment of COBOL developers to roles where their deep understanding of the system's logic and business requirements could be leveraged for the modernized ILS-S system.

The modernized ILS-S now boasts a remarkable 99.999% uptime, a testament to the enhanced platform stability and capabilities achieved through this project. This success has prompted the Business and Enterprise Systems Directorate (BES) of the USAF to replicate this modernization model across other critical systems, with TSRI currently working on the modernization of the Air Force's wholesale Stock Control System.

This journey from COBOL to Java, culminating in a truly cloud-native deployment on AWS, not only signifies a technological leap for the Air Force but also exemplifies a model of collaboration, innovation, and strategic foresight in modernizing critical defense systems.

To learn more about the project, read the case study

TSRI is Here for You 
As a leading provider of software modernization services, TSRI enables technology readiness for the cloud and other modern architecture environments. We bring software applications into the future quickly, accurately, and efficiently with low risk and minimal business disruption, accomplishing in months what would otherwise take years. 

See Case Studies 
Learn About Our Technology 
Get Started on Your Modernization Journey Today! 

Additional Sources:

• https://federalnewsnetwork.com/it-modernization/2022/11/lessons-learned-from-air-forces-ils-s-logistics-system-modernization/
• https://www.aflcmc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2888877/system-tracks-every-item-in-the-air-force-inventory/

TSRI adapted its industry-leading modernization capabilities to the unique Pitney Bowes Visual Basic 6 (VB6) code constructs for a successful automatic modernization of over 443,000 lines of VB6 code and over 450,000 lines of XML meta-data to modern C# .NET Core coming in well within budget and completing the transformation earlier than scheduled.

Additionally, TSRI’s partner, Accenture, had the opportunity to manually rewrite the user interfaces for the application, to achieve a modern and user-friendly experience, while TSRI simultaneously completed the automated transformation of the application code and database written in VB6. As a result, the application achieved total functional equivalence while the look and feel of the front end was greatly improved.

Customer: Pitney Bowes Source & Target Language: VB6 to C# .NET Core Lines of Code: 893,000 Duration: 5 Months Services:  Iterative Code Transformation, Defined VB6/.COM and C#/.NET Core component mappings, Automated Refactoring, Transformation Blueprint®

Educational Testing Service (ETS) is the world's largest private educational testing and measurement organization. Each year, they develop, administer,  and score more than 50 million tests, including the TOEFL®, TOEIC®, GRE®, and Praxis® tests, in more than 180 countries. This requires an enormous data management capability. ETS turned to TSRI to transform their ECT and Praxis applications and databases from IBM job control language (JCL) and COBOL Batch to modern Java SE 17 in a cloud-native optimized AWS environment. To do this, they used a spring boot-type application to implement web services invoked by Python. TSRI also converted the IBM DB2 database and VSAM sequential database files to a relational PostgreSQL database on AWS Aurora.

Customer: Educational Testing Service (ETS) Source & Target Language: IBM COBOL to Java SE 17 on AWS Lines of Code: 1,199,633 lines of COBOL and JCL Duration:  11 Months Services: Automated Code Transformation, Automated Refactoring, Integration and Testing Support, SonarQube Quality Refactoring, Code-Specific Adaptation, Database Migration, Transformation "To-Be" Blueprint®, Application "As-Is" Blueprint®, Code Warranty

CRA and AWS engaged with TSRI to complete the modernization of their COBOL-based system to Java on AWS. To Achieve CRA's goals, TSRI tuned JANUS Studio® to parse, transform, document, and refactor the IBM z/OS COBOL application. In just 1.5 months, TSRI modernized the application from an IBM Mainframe COBOL and CICS monolith to a modern multi-tier architecture in Java on the AWS cloud. Just as important, TSRI also converted the DB2 database and VSAM sequential files to a relational PostgreSQL database on AWS Aurora.

Customer: Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and AWS Source & Target Language: IBM COBOL to Java on AWS Lines of Code: 168,000 Duration:  1.5 Months Services: Automated Code Transformation, Automated Refactoring, Integration and Testing Support, SonarQube Quality Refactoring, Code-Specific Adaptation, Database Migration, Transformation "To-Be" Blueprint®, Application "As-Is" Blueprint®

The Pitney Bowes Postage Payment Application had been running COBOL for decades on an HP NonStop Tandem mainframe, however, to seize the opportunities of the digital cloud age and to reduce overall technical debt, Pitney Bowes needed to modernize the Tandem COBOL to C# .NET Core. Just as important as the code, the HP NonStop Tandem database needed to also be migrated to a modern Microsoft SQL Server database and deployed to AWS. TSRI successfully transformed the application at 99.96% automation, and deployed the modernized application on the AWS cloud.

Customer: Pitney Bowes Inc. Source & Target Language: COBOL to C# .Net Core on AWS Lines of Code: 390,000 Duration: 6 Months   Services:  Automated Code Transformation (99.96% level of automation), Automated Refactoring, Database Conversion: File based system to a Microsoft SQL Environment, Integration and Testing Support, Transformation Blueprint®, Application "As-Is" Blueprint®,

The Oregon's Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) serves approximately 300,000 employee members, inactive members and retirees from more than 850 public employers. OPERS required a major maintenance action of the OPERS Benefit Estimation Subsystem (BESS) and Benefit Calculation Subsystem (BCSS) to address changes in Oregon State retirement regulations. TSRI's automated refactoring capability was used to consolidate the applications and remove dead and redundant code.

Customer: State of Oregon Public Employees Retirement System     Source & Target Language: COBOL Refactoring Lines of Code: 250,000 Duration: 4 Months   Services:  JANUS Studio® Automated Refactoring, Testing and Implementation Support, Application Blueprint®

System integrator CSC was contracted to modernize AT&T's billing code, written in the C language. CSC brought The Software Revolution, Inc. (TSRI) aboard to generate documentation of AT&T's code to assist in their modernization efforts.

Customer: AT&T & CSC Source & Target Language: C Lines of Code: 961,780 Duration:  6 Weeks Services: Application Blueprint®, Engineering Support, Program Management, Blueprint Documentation Refresh, Defect Resolution, Documentation Customization

Sempra Energy needed to move their Microgrid Control System (MCS) application into a more contemporary environment. The challenge that TSRI and mLogica faced was transforming Sempra Energy's existing Sybase OpenServer platform into a more modern .NET/MS-SQL server environment under strict budget and schedule constraints. The project, which included the modernization, documentation, refactoring, testing, and integration of the application, was successfully concluded on-time and within budget constraints.

Customer: Sempra Energy & mLogica Source & Target Language: C to MS-SQL/C Lines of Code: 211,000 Duration: 4 Months Services: Automated Code Transformation, Automated Refactoring, Round-tripping, Unit Testing, Third Party Code Quality Refactoring, Integration and Testing Support, Transformation Blueprint®, Application Blueprint®

"The successful modernization and cloud deployment of these four critical government applications is proof that the U.S. Technology Modernization Fund is beginning to fulfill its purpose."

Nicolas Newcomb, TSRI President

KIRKLAND, Wash., March 31, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --TSRI, a recognized leader in fully-automated software modernization — announces the recent completion of a large-scale, public sector application modernization and mainframe retirement effort that transformed four critical, aging applications from Unisys COBOL to Java for a United States federal government agency. The federal agency’s applications containing millions of lines of code were modernized over three years and deployed to the Microsoft Azure Cloud.

The effort was the first of its kind to leverage the funds available to government entities via the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act’s Technology Modernization Fund (TMF). With federal government mandates gaining further prominence and the bipartisan bill — the Legacy IT Reduction Act of 2022 — currently on the floor of the U.S. Senate, TSRI is well-positioned to support government entities in modernizing their outdated legacy information technology systems. 

Critical and Aging Systems, Transformed for Modern Times
Despite incremental upgrades or patches over the years to this federal agency's decades-old mainframe applications, a dwindling supply of programmers made it increasingly difficult to maintain them. In addition, cloud computing would improve these mission-critical applications' reliability and security. Using TMF funds, this U.S. government entity sought to modernize several of its remaining critical systems on a legacy Unisys mainframe. TSRI provided automated code conversion of more than 1.3 million lines of the client's COBOL applications, with hierarchical DMS and relational RDMS databases, to the Microsoft Azure cloud. TSRI implemented Java as the target language and Microsoft SQL Server as the target relational database at 99.67% automation levels.

On day one after the production systems were switched over from the Unisys mainframe to the Microsoft Azure cloud, the new system supported 25,356 users and 299,715 transactions with only three user problems reported. These critical systems — responsible for managing, storing, and protecting personal financial and employment-related data for government-supported home financing — were seamlessly deployed to the new Microsoft Azure Cloud environment without impact on operations. The positive results could be seen in the first 30 days during which the new system disbursed billions of dollars in program funds to eligible users without a single error.

“The successful modernization and cloud deployment of these four critical government applications is proof that the U.S. Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) is beginning to fulfill its purpose,” TSRI President, Nicolas Newcomb, said. “This federal agency’s crucial technology now serves people more predictably and reliably while providing efficiency and cost-savings for the government and therefore, Americans. Furthermore, these applications can now be more effectively maintained and evolved now and in the future.”

View the case study for more details on this government IT modernization project.

For Government Agencies, The Time to Modernize is Now
Four years ago, the United States government established the Technology Modernization Fund to support federal agencies in funding the modernization of their aging information technology infrastructure. On March 23, a bi-partisan bill was introduced to the United States Senate: The Legacy IT Reduction Act of 2022. The bill aims to make the modernization of federal legacy IT systems mandatory.

“Every year, the number of programmers required to maintain or improve the legacy systems we all rely on shrinks but that doesn’t mean we depend on those systems any less,” TSRI’s Nicolas Newcomb said. “We can say that this one federal agency’s crucial technology is now serving the American people more predictably and reliably, but there are still thousands of crucial, at-risk applications that we rely on to conduct our daily lives and business. We have never previously witnessed the scale and severity of technology obsolescence we may currently face.”

Nicolas continued: “TSRI can reliably and rapidly modernize — and frequently improve —these carefully designed systems. Cloud architectures offer predictable landing zones, and the sophistication of the foundational technologies have made modernizations more seamless than ever. Done well, a modernization accelerates the delivery of benefits to business bottom lines and improves the lives of end-users. Simultaneously, modernizations help relieve the liabilities caused by technical debt and human resource scarcity. In the end, application modernization is organizational modernization. Therefore, TMF funding is a responsible step to ensure our government is competitive, secure, and efficient. There should be no doubt that the time to modernize our crucial software infrastructure applications is indeed now,” he concluded.

TSRI has decades of experience modernizing applications in over 35 legacy languages for public sector, government, and military entities in the U.S. and beyond. Examples include the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Customs and Border Control, the U.S. Navy, the Canadian Revenue Agency, and the Government of Denmark. View TSRI’s case studies for more.

Today’s modern systems often require deployment to cloud environments. TSRI modernizes applications for deployment to any cloud environment and is a validated Amazon Web Services Mainframe Migration partner.

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TSRI is Here for You 
As a leading provider of software modernization services, TSRI enables technology readiness for the cloud and other modern architecture environments. We bring software applications into the future quickly, accurately, and efficiently with low risk and minimal business disruption, accomplishing in months what would otherwise take years. 

TSRI – Software Modernization Assured
See Case Studies 
Learn About Our Technology 
Get Started on Your Modernization Journey Today!

Northrop Grumman Mission Systems was tasked with the modernization the Mission Planning Enterprise Contract (MPEC)-related Autorouter.  This system was written principally in legacy FORTRAN code.  Northrop Grumman contracted TSRI to employ their automated modernization processes in this task, which also included the removal of dead and duplicate code, and the automated production of bridge documentation.

Customer: Northrop Grumman Source & Target Language: Fortran to C# Lines of Code: 125,000 Duration:  6 months Services: Code Transformation of Multiple Legacy Languages, Automated Refactoring, Installation and Testing Support, Transformation Blueprint®